[At-Large] [WHOIS-WG] Fwd: WHOIS Policy Review Team Final Report

John R. Levine johnl at iecc.com
Thu May 17 06:15:21 UTC 2012


> Unfortuantely far too many people come from states where whois 
> information freely avaialble on the net can cost them and their families 
> their well being or their lives.

There are certainly countries with oppressive governments.  But anyone who 
would ask a person in a situation like that to depend on some random 
registrar or registry's privacy policy to keep them from being disappeared 
would be an idiot.

As has been noted about a zillion times before, people in such a situation 
would need to find a trusted intermediary to arrange for web or mail 
hosting and internet access, and if they want a domain, the intermediary 
can arrange for that, too.

Unlike many (perhaps all) of the other people in this argument, I'm not 
speaking hypothetically.  There is a widely used spam blacklist called the 
CBL at cbl.abuseat.org, which criminal spammers dislike enough to have 
made death threats against the person who operates it.  Real, no kidding, 
law enforcement investigated death threats.

If you check the WHOIS info for abuseat.org, you will find actual contact 
information.  If you call the phone number, which is in California, a 
polite person will answer.  If you ask nicely, she will take a message for 
the CBL.  The person who runs the CBL is in a different country, and she 
most definitely will not provide the person's name or what country it is.

This is the reality.  I cannot imagine why people are making the same 
arguements that were an insult to our intelligence in 1998, and haven't 
improved with time.

R's,
John



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